The background: Where, we wonder, would you position Emily Wells in what remains of the world's record stores? Probably not the classical section, although the daughter of a music minister and a French horn teacher began learning the violin from the age of four and she plays a bunch of non-rock instruments live, sometimes as many as 10, making her sound like a one-woman chamber-pop orchestra. It wouldn't be hard to argue for the hip-hop section, due to the fact that she earned some early notoriety with a cover version of Notorious BIG's Juicy and she has recorded with Dan the Automator; her use of loops and sample pads hints at a further affinity, in terms of rhythm and production techniques, with that genre. The soundtrack section wouldn't be out of the question, either: consider her theme to Park Chan-Wook's acclaimed psychological thriller Stoker, and her subsequent collaboration with the film's composer, Clint Mansell (If I Ever Had a Heart is featured as a bonus cut on the official score). Then again, you could probably just as easily put her in the folk section, given her quirky, demure vocals that remind us, variously, of Joanna Newsom, Phildel, Björk and, oddly, Ed Harcourt, with whom she shares an idiosyncratic approach to melody and baroque arrangements.

Do they have sections marked "eccentric"? That would work. Wells – who has lived all over the US, moving with her family from Texas to Indiana, and then by herself from New York to Los Angeles – is a bit of an Ariel Pink in that she has been issuing recordings on cassette since she turned 13. Her instrument arsenal includes glockenspiels, analog synths and toy pianos, a setup that she calls her "sonic spaceship". Her latest album, Mama, her UK debut, was recorded in a tiny cabin on a Topanga Canyon horse ranch and features what are probably Wells's most conventional songs to date, even as they dart mercurially around the subjects of love and grief. The titles – including Johnny Cash's Mama's House and Dirty Sneakers and Underwear – suggest a whimsical and capricious talent, while the music confirms Wells's ability to merge different styles at will and create accessible tunes even – or especially – when they're as weirdly melodic, or melodically weird, as Let Your Guard Down and No Good, which belong in another record store section altogether, the one marked "hallucinatory country".